Let us compare the process of dilution with the process of ionization within a star. In the center of the sun, gravitational pressure causes a temperature of as much as forty million degrees. The energy of this great heat tears electrons completely away from the atoms, leaving the nuclei more or less bare, and transforms a small fraction of the atom into radiant energy. This temperature cannot be duplicated on earth. However, energy is transmutable into many forms. If forty million degrees of heat energy were transmuted into mechanical energy, the effect of an atom would be just as great but not necessarily of the same nature.
The expansive force of successive dilutions is energy in a cold form but it can be compared to the energy of the highest imaginable degrees of temperature. However, a temperature of millions of degrees will destroy the salt-molecule itself, not only by breaking up the combination between sodium and chlorine but also by mutilating the sodium and chlorine atoms themselves. The nature of the energy of dilution being similar to the nature of the energy against which it is exerted does not destroy the inherent nature of the salt.
Possibly a high dilution represents a state of matter which is not duplicated in the natural processes of any part of the universe. The fact that high dilutions cause characteristic reflexes in the human body when in contact with it suggests a state of matter similar to radiant energy.
The fact that wire coils of different sizes modify the effects suggests that the energy in high dilutions has an undulatory quality of different frequencies. Present-day science, however, does not give us definite knowledge as to its nature.
Of the inherent nature of salt itself, is nothing known which gives light on the subject? What makes salt that which it is? It is in the nature of sodium and chlorine to unite under certain conditions, the union resulting in salt, a substance which has a nature essentially its own, and the only thing that will change the nature is something which will destroy the combination itself. It has certain characteristics which, combined, do not belong to any other substance.
It crystallizes in a certain angular pattern and no amount of outside force can alter that pattern. Its taste, its appearance, its chemical and all other characteristics are those of salt and nothing else. It is an entity which, from the beginning, existed as a possibility and it manifests itself as salt when physical conditions are right. It has potentiality which can be defined as “the determination to be,” and this term can be used as a first name for every possible or actual substance in the universe. This term individuality, almost personality-but it neither explains nor offers any but a metaphysical concept-and this is not science.
A study of the mechanisms through which high dilutions manifest themselves may give a hint about the ultimate nature of our potencies. Thus far, living things have been the best medium for registering very high dilutions. Maybe this is because of an unique quality of the element carbon. Carbon is one of the chemical elements always present in every molecule of living substance. Without it, life, as we know it, could not exist on this earth. All elements except carbon unite chemically in more or less stable combinations, containing only a small number of atoms-e.g., one atom of sodium unites with one atom of chlorine to form salt.
Life could not exist if all chemical combinations were as stable and as simple as this. The carbon atom, with six electrons surrounding its nucleus has, among all the elements, the unique quality of combining with other elements in large, unstable molecules. The more important elements which compose molecules of living structures are hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen in conjunction with carbon.
Hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen among themselves do not form molecules of more than four atoms, but with carbon they from molecules containing from hundreds to tens of thousands of atoms. Such chemical structures are exquisitely labile, and the thousands of different combinations in a living body, all working together as a unit, constitute a machine so delicately balanced chemically and mechanically as to respond to influences which have neither weight nor substances.
Back of all vital phenomena is life itself. Mind, thoughts, emotions, like and dislikes, the indefinable something for which the words “Spirit” and “soul” are used are associated with life. None of these entities, all of which represent energy, are included in physical science. It may be that the energy in high dilutions must be investigated along other then physical lines or perhaps a new branch of physical science will have to be established.
In physical science, there is a term known as a “field;” for example, if an electrical current pass along a wire, the space surrounding the wire is filled with an electrical field. There is and electrical field associated with atoms. For the study of our present subjects, we may be obliged to conceive of another field which we can call “the field of possible things”.
Such a field actually exists, and there are men whose minds work in the field of possible things. Such a man in Einstein, whose mind grasps abstract mathematical principles and he evolves in his mind formulae to fit possible conditions; he tests the formulae in connection with known conditions and, if they are consistent with each other, he continues along the same line and takes further steps in the same direction.
The was his method of developing the idea of relatively. Steinmetz, the magician of the General Electric Company, was a great thinker of the same order. Most electrical discoveries have been made through observation of simple facts and the step by elaboration of apparatus through experimenting. Steinmetz went into the realm of possibilities with his formula and worked out, form pure abstractions, principles which could be applied practically. It is probable that the discovery of the nature of the physics of high dilutions will come through the intuition of some genius working in the field of possibilities.
NEW YORK, N.Y.
DISCUSSION
DR. A.PULFORD: I have been very much interested in this paper, and especially about the high dilution. I think that we homoeopaths mistake the drug envelope for the drug. Every drug contains within itself a fixed power that never changes. If you dilute your remedy the ultimate resultant symptoms will be absolutely the same. When you have removed the envelope you have gone as far as physical power can go. When life leaves the body nothing will act on that body. The something which acts upon that body, which animates it, cannot be physical. When you reach this point you will find that the power cannot be measured. No amount of physical instrumentation will ever determine it. When you combine one power with another, for example when you combine your lime with sulphur, you get an entirely different result. In my opinion we are taking the drug envelope for the drug.
Take Belladonna, for instance. Dry Belladonna and it becomes practically inert. What has disappeared? The power that that drug envelope contained has disappeared and you get practically no action from your drug.
I think we are wasting much time trying to demonstrate this thing physically. It cant be done. No microscope, no instrument will ever be devised or developed which will demonstrate the point at which the drug disappears as such, the point at which it becomes inactive.
DR. I.FARR: I have enjoyed this paper because it is taking our homoeopathic remedy and applying it along the line of scientific medicine, so-called. We have been criticized as homoeopaths because we get away from the crude drug strength. The following illustration has many times been cited: One could put a drop of a drug in the Mississippi river and have a potentized medicine at New Orleans.
It seems to me in Dr.Stearns paper we have a basis for believing in homoeopathic dilutions.
We have one in our own ranks who has, from the scientific standpoint, suggested the difference between a crude drug and a dilution or a potency. This should help to put homoeopathy before the world on something more than purely a philosophical basis.
There is no question but that philosophy is perhaps the keynote to successful homoeopathic prescribing. It was the basis of Hahnemanns work. Hahnemann was a chemist with a philosophical mind. He has given in the Organon and this other work practical demonstrations of what can be done with a remedy when we get away from the cured strength of it. Now if we can demonstrate through physics what a dilution is, what power, not found in the crude drug, it has acquired, it seems to me that we will be making progress.
DR.G.ROYAL: MR. President, I want to say just a few words about this paper. I do not know anything about what Guy is taking about but I do know that he knows what he is taking about. Such a paper and the influence of such a man as Guy Stearns is of great benefit for the homoeopathic profession.
